Volunteer vacancy: whistleblowing steering group

One of the guiding principles of The Care Locker is that it should adopt best practise so that the people in our care, and the people caring for them, are respected and well treated.

This includes not only our own staff, but the people in the care units that we visit, support, and look after.

These are our customers, and like the people we care for, they deserve respect, compassion and a voice.

Anyone working in the care sector will know just what a challenge this is.

As CEO, I want to put together a steering group to look at best practise for whistle blowing to guide me in the right direction. When whistles blow wrongly or vindictively, people suffer. But when they fail to blow on something dreadful, everyone suffers – good care units and carers earn the same mistrust as the mediocre.

Whilst I have a view on how this should look, it would be remiss of me not to include the views of others (as well, of course, as the CQC). I want us to be trustworthy and fair in our approach. I want a safe environment for good – no, great – things to happen. I want MY Care Locker team to be seen as an elite, really useful to the people we serve. It’s only the people at the ‘coal face’ who genuinely know the daily realities facing them.

Our immediate goals are:

To define a procedure for The Care Locker for incident reporting

To define a procedure for raising/flagging concerns about a unit or personnel at a unit

To define a procedure for units to raise concerns regarding our staff

To define ways of identifying likely issues and preventing them becoming incidents

To establish an internal structure and leadership to make this work

In the medium term, our goals are:

To establish the questions that need asking in reports from staff and from care units to help take preventative measures

To communicate best practise and research to all registered staff, possibly even adding a training unit

To work with our care unit customers and share best practise to prevent potential issues arising

In the long term, our goals are:

To establish a reputation for our staff as being great to work with, having a positive impact on behalf of our customers and the people in their care

To be in a position to positively influence our industry with regard to ‘whistle blowing

If this has a positive effect, we will consider creating a paid role within the company. (Right now, we’re not trading, and unfunded). This steering group will be established if there are individuals from the staffing side, and care managers are happy to participate.

In the short term, people will need to be able to work together remotely. Longer term, we plan to make budget available for more formal meetings.

This is a brilliant opportunity to be in at ground level and shape the future the way you’d like it to be.